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King Herod Antipas
King Herod Antipater (born: 20 BC – died: 39 AD) known by the nickname "Antipas", was a 1st century ruler of Galilee and Perea, who bore the title of tetrarch and is referred to as both "Herod the Tetrarch" and "King Herod" in The New Testament although he never held the title of King. He is widely known today for accounts in The New Testament of his role in events that led to the executions of John The Baptist and Jesus Of Nazareth. History Early Life Prince Herod Antipas was a son of King Herod the Great, who had become King of Judea and Malthace, who was from Samaria. His date of birth is unknown but was before 20 BC. Prince Herod Antipas, his full brother Prince Herod Archelaus and his half-brother Prince Herod Philip II were educated in Rome. Prince Herod Antipas was not King Herod's first choice of heir. That honor fell to Prince Aristobulus IV and Prince Alexander, King Herod's sons by the Hasmonean Princess Mariamne. It was only after they were executed and King Herod's oldest son Prince Antipater II was convicted of trying to poison his father, that the now elderly King Herod fell back on his youngest son Prince Herod Antipas, revising his will to make him heir. During his illness in 4 BC, King Herod had yet another change of heart about the succession. According to the final version of his will, Prince Herod Antipas's elder brother Prince Herod Archelaus was now to become King of Judea, Idumea and Samaria, while Prince Herod Antipas would rule Galilee and Perea with the lesser title of tetrarch.Prince Herod Philip II was to receive Gaulanitis, Batanaea, Trachonitis and Auranitis. Because of Judea's status as a Roman client kingdom, King Herod's plans for the succession had to be ratified by Emperor Augustus. The 3 heirs therefore travelled to Rome to make their claims, King Herod Antipas arguing he ought to inherit the whole kingdom and the others maintaining that King Herod's final will ought to be honored. Despite qualified support for King Herod Antipas from Herodian family members in Rome, who favoured direct Roman rule of Judea but considered King Herod Antipas preferable to his brother, Emperor Augustus largely confirmed the division of territory set out by King Herod in his final will. King Herod Archelaus had, however, to be content with the title of ethnarch rather than King. Regin In 6 AD, King Herod Archelaus was deemed incompetent by Emperor Augustus and replaced with a prefect. As a result, King Herod Antipas would govern Galilee and Perea for the next 42 years. The 2 territories were separated by the region of the Decapolis, with Galilee to the north and Perea to the south. Threats to stability in both areas would have been clear to King Herod Antipas when he took office. While he had been making his case to Emperor Augustus in Rome, dissidents led by Judas son of Hezekiah had attacked the palace of Sepphoris in Galilee, seizing money as well as weapons which they used to terrorize the area. In a counterattack ordered by Quinctilius Varus, Roman governor of Syria, Sepphoris was destroyed by fire and it's inhabitants sold as slaves. Perea, meanwhile, bordered on the kingdom of Nabatea, which had long had uneasy relations with Romans and Jews. Part of King Herod Antipas's solution was to follow in his father's footsteps as a builder. He rebuilt and fortified Sepphoris, while also adding a wall to Betharamphtha in Perea. The latter city was renamed Livias after Emperor Augustus's wife Empresses Livia Drusilla and later Julias after his daughter. However, the tetrarch's most noted construction was his capital on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee Tiberias, so named to honor his patron Emperor Tiberius, who had succeeded Emperor Augustus as emperor in 14 AD. Residents could bathe nearby at the warm springs of Emmaus and by the time of the First Jewish-Roman War the city's own buildings included a stadium, a royal palace and a sanctuary for prayer. It gave it's name to the sea and later became a center of rabbinic learning. However, pious Jews at first refused to live in it because it was built atop a graveyard and therefore a source of ritual impurity, King Herod Antipas had to colonize it using a mixture of foreigners, forced migrants, poor people and freed slaves. At other times King Herod Antipas was more sensitive to Jewish tradition. His coins carried no images, which would have violated Jewish prescriptions against idolatry. When Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea from 26 AD to 36 AD, caused offence by placing votive shields in the Antonia palace at Jerusalem, King Herod Antipas and his brothers successfully petitioned for their removal. Early in his reign, King Herod Antipas had married the daughter of King Aretas IV Philopatris of Nabatea. However, on a visit to Rome he stayed with his half-brother Prince Herod Philip I and there, he fell in love with his wife, Princess Herodias, the granddaughter of King Herod The Great and Queen Mariamne I and the 2 agreed to marry, after King Herod Antipas had divorced his wife. King Aretas IV Philopatris's daughter learned of the plan and asked permission to travel to the frontier fortress of Machaerus, whence Nabatean forces escorted her to her father. With his daughter now safe in his custody, King Aretas IV Philopatris now could declare war on King Herod Antipas. It is generally agreed that the war, in which King Herod Antipas was defeated, occurred in 36, a year before the death of the Emperor Tiberius. A point of contention today is how long before this date King Herod Antipas's marriage to Princess Herodias took place. Some surmise that the marriage of King Herod Antipas and Princess Herodias took place shortly before the war in about the year 34, after the death of Prince Herod Philip I, but others have pointed to Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews Book 18, chapter 5, paragraph 4 comment that Queen Herodias "divorced herself from her husband while he was alive" to argue that it took place before Prince Herod Philip I's death, in about the year 27, thus making it possible for Jesus to have been born in the reign of King Herod The Great as indicated by the Gospel of Matthew and to have died in his early 30's as indicated by the Gospel of Luke. King Herod Antipas faced more immediate problems in his own tetrarchy after John The Baptist in 28/29 AD according to the Gospel of Luke or 27 AD, if the co-regency of Emperor Augustus and Emperor Tiberius is included in Luke's reckoning of time, for which there is some evidence, began a ministry of preaching and baptism by the Jordan River, which marked the western edge of King Herod Antipas's territory of Perea. The New Testament Gospels state that John attacked the Tetrarch's marriage as contrary to Jewish law, it was incestuous, as Queen Herodias was also King Herod Antipas's niece, but also John criticized the fact that she was his brother's wife in Mark 6:18, lending credence to the belief that King Herod Antipas and Queen Herodias married while Prince Herod Philip I was still alive, while Josephus says that John's public influence made King Herod Antipas fearful of rebellion. John was imprisoned in Machaerus and executed. According to Matthew and Mark, King Herod Antipas was reluctant to order John's death but was compelled by Queen Herodias's daughter, who was unnamed in the text but named by Josephus as Princess Salome, to whom he had promised any reward she chose as a result of her dancing skills for the guests at his birthday banquet. Among those baptized by John was Jesus Of Nazareth, who began his own ministry in Galilee causing King Herod Antipas, according to Matthew and Mark, to fear that John The Baptiser had been raised from the dead. Luke alone among the Gospels states that a group of Pharisees warned Jesus that King Herod Antipas was plotting his death, whereupon Jesus denounced the tetrarch as a "fox" and declared that he, Jesus, would not fall victim to such a plot because "it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem". Luke also credits the tetrarch with a role in Jesus's trial. According to Luke, Pontius Pilate, on learning that Jesus was a Galilean and therefore under King Herod the Great's jurisdiction, sent him to King Herod Antipas, who was also in Jerusalem at the time. Initially, King Herod Antipas was pleased to see Jesus, hoping to see him perform a miracle, but when Jesus remained silent in the face of questioning King Herod Antipas mocked him and sent him back to Pontius Pilate. Luke says that these events improved relations between Pontius Pilate and King Herod the Great despite their earlier enmity. The reason for King Herod Antipas's involvement has been debated. Theodor Mommsen argued that the normal legal procedure of the early Roman empire was for defendants to be tried by the authorities of their home provinces. A. N. Sherwin-White re-examined the relevant legal texts and concluded that trials were generally based on the location of the alleged crimes, but that there was a possibility of referral to a province of origin in special cases. If Pontius Pilate was not required to send Jesus to King Herod Antipas, he may have been making a show of courtesy to the tetrarch and trying to avoid the need to deal with the Jewish authorities himself. When Jesus was sent back, Pontius Pilate could still have represented King Herod Antipas's failure to convict as support for his own view according to Luke that Jesus was not guilty of a capital offence, thus allowing him to avoid responsibility for Jesus's crucifixion. Due to the lack of historical evidence, it has been suggested that Jesus's trial by King Herod Antipas is unhistorical. Robin Lane Fox, for example, an English historian, claims that the story was invented based on Psalm 2, in which "the Kings of the earth" are described as opposing the Lord's "anointed" and also served to show that the authorities failed to find grounds for convicting Jesus. Between 34 and 36 AD the conflict with King Aretas IV Philopatris of Nabatea, caused by King Herod Antipas's divorce from King Aretas IV Philopatris's daughter and the rulers's disagreement over territory, developed into open war. King Herod Antipas's army suffered a devastating defeat after fugitives from the former tetrarchy of King Herod Philip II sided with the Nabateans and King Herod Antipas was forced to appeal to Emperor Tiberius for help. The Emperor ordered Lucius Vitellius, governor of Syria, to march against Aretas and ensure that he was captured or killed. Lucius Vitellius obediently mobilized 2 legions, sending them on a detour around Judea while he joined King Herod Antipas in attending a festival at Jerusalem. While staying there he learned of the death of Emperor Tiberius, concluded he lacked the authority to go to war and recalled his troops. Josephus implies that Lucius Vitellius was unwilling to cooperate with the tetrarch because of a grudge he bore from an earlier incident. According to his account, King Herod Antipas provided hospitality at a conference on the Euphrates between Lucius Vitellius and King Artabanus III of Parthia and after Lucius Vitellius's diplomatic success anticipated the governor in sending a report to Emperor Tiberius. However, other sources place the meeting between Lucius Vitellius and King Artabanus III under Emperor Tiberius's successor Caligula, leading some historians to think that Josephus misdated it to the reign of Emperor Tiberius or conflated it with an earlier diplomatic meeting involving King Herod Antipas and Lucius Vitellius. Exile And Death King Herod Antipas's fall from power was due to Caligula and to his own nephew King Herod Agrippa, brother of Queen Herodias. When King Herod Agrippa fell into debt during the reign of Emperor Tiberius despite his connections with the imperial family, Queen Herodias persuaded King Herod Antipas to provide for him, but the 2 men quarrelled and King Herod Agrippa departed. After King Herod Agrippa was heard expressing to his friend Caligula his eagerness for Emperor Tiberius to die and leave room for Caligula to succeed him, he was imprisoned. When Caligula finally became Emperor in 37 AD, he not only released his friend but granted him rule of King Herod Philip II's former tetrarchy slightly extended, with the title of King. Josephus relates that Queen Herodias, jealous at King Herod Agrippa's success, persuaded King Herod Antipas to ask Emperor Caligula for the title of King for himself. However, King Herod Agrippa simultaneously presented the Emperor with a list of charges against the tetrarch, allegedly, he had conspired against Emperor Tiberius with Lucius Aelius Sejanus and was now plotting against Emperor Caligula with King Artabanus III. As evidence, King Herod Agrippa noted that King Herod Antipas had a stockpile of weaponry sufficient for 70,000 men. Hearing King Herod Antipas's admission to this last charge, Emperor Caligula decided to credit the allegations of conspiracy. In the summer of 39 AD, King Herod Antipas's money and territory were turned over to King Herod Agrippa, while he himself was exiled. The place of his exile is given by Josephus's Antiquities as "Lugdunum" in Gaul. This may mean either the city of Lugdunum now known as Lyon, or the less important Lugdunum Convenarum, modern Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges. Emperor Caligula offered to allow Queen Herodias, as King Herod Agrippa's sister, to retain her property. However, she chose instead to join her husband in exile. King Herod Antipas died in exile. The 3rd century historian Lucius Cassius Dio seems to imply that Emperor Caligula had him killed, but this is usually treated with skepticism by modern historians. Gallery King Herod the Great 3.jpg|King Herod Antipas in Rome Bible-episode-3-herod-antipas-P.jpeg|King Herod Antipas in The Bible King Herod Antipas 3.jpg|King Harod Antipas in King Of Kings B3F01E66-BDBC-4B57-9F91-577A5839485A.jpeg|King Herod Antipas in The Nativity Story King Herod Antipas.jpg King Herod the Great 5.jpg King Herod the Great 2.jpg King Herod Antipas 2.jpg Herod Antipas coin.jpg Herod Antipas in the Bible and Beyond.jpg Herod Antipas ruled Galilee.jpg HerodAntipas v1 Best.jpg 02 DonnPCrane JesusBeforeHerod 100.jpg King Herod Antipas 4.jpg Category:Biblical Villains Category:Male Category:Roman Time Villains Category:Abusers Category:Destroyer of Innocence Category:Monarchs Category:Tyrants Category:Murderer Category:Kings Category:Princes Category:Corrupt Officials Category:Deceased Category:God Wannabe Category:On & Off Villains Category:Evil vs Evil Category:Greedy Category:Slaver Category:Xenophobes Category:Lawful Evil